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“Scary as hell Alps”
posted by jon on March 7th, 2008
I got back to work from my second week’s skiing this year fully expecting Chris to have converted my work space into an allotment or something, but fortunately it was just how I left it. Having said that, our replica Chris seemed to have a bit of a growth spurt while I was gone:
Anyway, I hadn’t seen my dad for a while so we decided to have a long weekend on the slopes in Switzerland, as it’s not all that far from where he lives.
Well, we arrived on Friday in the early afternoon and hired me some boots, but the weather was not looking all that great, so we just skied around on the secondary slopes for a couple of hours. On the second day, the weather got even worse - so much so that all but one of the lifts in the area were closed down!
We hopped on the bus which took us to the only place that was left open - Engstligenalp - and tried to ski in the blizzards there for the day! I don’t speak Swiss, but I do speak German, and I’m pretty sure “Engstligenalp” must translate roughly as “Scary as hell Alps”! The “slightly windy” conditions meant that by the time we got to the top of the lifts the snow was hitting us in the face like hail stones! We somehow got stuck in the middle of a blue run/road with visibility of about 3 yards and I, of course, managed to stack it again and land on the same shoulder I crippled on the last skiing trip! Go Jon!
When we woke up on Sunday and looked out off our balconies, the tops of the mountains were entirely shrouded in dense fog. We ate our breakfast and got on the gondola preparing for more of what the previous days were like. An hour after we got off the lift, the sun appeared out of nowhere and burnt all the fog away, followed by my face. I really wish I’d worn more suncream!!
What with the sun and all the rain from the previous days, the snow rapidly turned to slush and became almost impossible to ski on in my BigFeet and my dad’s Snow Blades, so we decided to hire us some Carver skis on the last day! After skiing exclusively on BigFeet for the last 10 years or so, it was well strange getting back on normal skis, so guess where I landed when I fell over again!!
Anyway, it was an awesome weekend, and now I can’t wait until next year to go again! In the mean time, check out a 360 degree panorama from half way down a red run at Adelboden:
It’s a 5mb file, so don’t click unless you have broadband! 